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Goldman Sachs is expected to report record profits this week. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi calls the giant investment bank a "vampire squid," and notes how many Goldman alumni were involved in last year's financial bailout, which benefitted the firm. Taibbi concludes: It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs - its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign - sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting...

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street leviathan that is heavily invested in the cap-and-trade carbon market scam, has admitted it has developed and used software that can manipulate such financial markets. The revelation came during proceedings in a legal case with enough plot twists to make even John Grisham proud; it was made, not by Goldman, but by an assistant U.S. Attorney. "(B)ecause of the way this software interfaces with the various markets and exchanges, the bank has raised a possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets...

Executives at Goldman Sachs sold almost $700m worth of stock following the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Most of the sales occurred during the period in which the investment bank enjoyed the support of $10bn from the troubled asset relief programme. The surge in selling among Goldman partners, at a time when the US government had thrown a lifeline to Wall Street, is likely to draw criticism from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Having survived the crisis, the bank is expected to report strong second-quarter earnings on Tuesday on rebounding trading...

Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) has just come out with a quarter that will please everyone. Unfortunately, this was telegraphed by recent analyst calls with above-estimate forecasts. The investment banking giant, a.k.a. ‘bankless’ bank holding company, posted earnings at $4.93 EPS versus $3.54 estimates on revenues of $13.76 billion versus estimates of $10.6 billion. The huge gain came in net revenues from trading and principal investments with a 93% gain. Investment banking was stronger than recent quarters, but down 15% from a year ago. The big drop was in financial advisory operations, which saw a 54% decline. Another growth for...

We missed this when it happened but, via Zero Hedge, here's a great clip of Charlie Gasparino going off on Goldman Sachs (GS), and how even they're fallible. He seems to be insinuating that CNBC is protecting the bank from criticism right around the 3-minute mark. Either that or he's just speaking vaguely about all the adoration they receive for being so smart.

Have they learnt nothing?” goes the cry, as profits and pay at Goldman Sachs surge to near record levels. The investment banks that have survived the crisis have returned to their bad old ways, paying outrageously high bonuses, that encourage excessive risk-taking at institutions that are too big to fail. Much of this is nonsense. Profits certainly have recovered remarkably quickly and if the markets hold up for the rest of the year the bonuses will surely follow. The size of these payments will be very hard for many ordinary mortals to stomach. After all, Goldman has benefited massively from...

They will never admit to this at Goldman Sachs (they don’t really fess up to much over there at the Big G) but in the fall of 2008, just after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy gave the world a lesson in systemic risk, Goldman, the world’s greatest risk taker, was finished too. That’s right, it was toast. Finished. Kaput. Until, that is, the firm that was built on wheeling and dealing in some of the most esoteric investments the world of high finance had ever seen, needed a government bailout to stay afloat, which included $10 billion in cash from the...

Yesterday saw one TARP recipient, Goldman Sachs, report $3.44 billion in profits even as another, CIT, teeters on the edge of either bankruptcy or another taxpayer bailout. Which way CIT will tip remained unclear as we went to press, but its very plight shows how the government's approach to systemic risk has created groups of financial "haves" and "have nots." What the Goldmans of the world have in addition to profits is the widespread belief that they are too big to fail. Both Goldman and CIT converted into bank holding companies at the height of the financial panic last fall,...

Earlier this evening as I headed back to my hotel, I passed through the mall area of the Prudential Center in Boston. At one point, there was a kiosk in front of me that contained Russian Matryoshka dolls. I noticed a guy hitting on the sales clerk at the doll kiosk. As I passed by, in total amazement, I heard the guy say to the girl, "Even the central banker of Italy used to work for Goldman Sachs." Whether they know it or not, Goldman has a PR problem. When you have a guy hitting on a girl by displaying...

See: July 16, 2009: Pyramid Economy Glenn Beck's BUBBLE WEB

For some the spectacle of Goldman Sachs' profits triggers awe; for others, many others, it's triggering an intense spate of ire. On Comedy Central's Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked Rep. Barney Frank, "What are these Goldman Sachs guys going to do next, dip their [private parts] in gold?" Rolling Stone charges that Goldman Sachs created the dot-com, housing and commodity bubbles. Other headlines scream "Government Sachs" about the high posts in government held formerly by ex-Goldman Sachs bigwigs Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin, and currently by New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley....

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

THE MONEY MACHINE THAT IS GOLDMAN SACHS is humming again just a few quarters after the firm's existence was briefly in doubt following Lehman Brothers' collapse. Goldman last week reported $3.4 billion in net income for the second quarter, its strongest showing ever. Stripping out a one-time preferred dividend related to the firm's repayment of its $10 billion government TARP investment, Goldman earned $5.71 a share, up from $4.58 in the second quarter of 2008. -snip - Goldman isn't the bargain it was then when the stock traded under 100, but it could rise to $175 to $200 in -snip-...

In yet another move to make a mockery of so-called market transparency, and again with mad props to Zerohedge, we have this: The Exchange has filed with the SEC to implement the decommissioning of the DPTRrequirement following the July 10, 2009 trade date. Accordingly, the last required submission of the DPTR will be on July 14, 2009, which is the second business day after the last trade date for which the DPTR is required. Go read the entire Zerohedge article; what this means, in short, is that the ability of people (like you and I) to see the fact that...

SEATTLE (AP) — The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted during its convention this week to change its name to the American Association for Justice. Spokeswoman Chris Mather said there was overwhelming support for the change, and that the new name "reflects whose side we're on in the fight for justice." The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, a critic of the trial lawyers group, called it "an astounding admission of the unpopularity of trial lawyers in America." The 60-year-old association has 65,000 members.

Greedy American Trial Lawyers to Increase South African Poverty Through Apartheid Lawsuits That Will Only Make Them Rich America's 34-million African-Americans should be outraged by the campaign of economic blackmail that a handful of profit-driven personal injury lawyers are waging against the financially beleaguered Republic of South Africa. Against the expressed wishes of the revered Nelson Mandela and President Thabo Mbeki, the lawyers are filing class-action lawsuits in courts against U.S. corporations who did business in South Africa during apartheid - unjustly claiming that their mere presence in the country aided and abetted that nation's racist government. In fact, the...